This video has been shared almost 100,000 times on Facebook in just over ten days and while it is shocking, horrific and confronting it’s a video you need to see. It is a public service announcement warning drivers about the inherent dangers of texting and driving. Watch it:

Reaction time to an event is 1.8 seconds

It’s staggering and confronting and brings to mind every single time that you have thought you’d just take a quick look at your phone while you are behind the wheel – because you falsely believe that your eyes will only be averted for a second.

Research by the NRMA actually shows that drivers spend up to 400 percent more time with their eyes off the road when they are texting as opposed to when they are not. The ‘eyes off the road’ time is generally defined as two seconds plus, but the average person’s reaction time to an event is 1.8 seconds. Clearly when your eyes are not on the road you have no time to react

NRMA research also showed that reading and, in particular, sending text messages, has a detrimental effect on a number of safety-critical driving measures – drivers are unable to maintain lateral position and to detect and respond appropriately to traffic signs.

The number of young drivers using the phone in the car

But perhaps most frightening of all is that a study by the George Institute found that more than 30 percent of young drivers have written and sent text messages while driving. The study, published in the Medical Journal of Australia, concluded that an estimated 57 percent of drivers have used a mobile phone while driving.

While there has been some evidence to show that drivers on their mobile devices attempted to compensate for being distracted by increasing their following distance, they did not reduce their speed which could increase their risk of being involved in a crash because it increases the stopping distance required to avoid a collision.

It’s up to the parents

There are huge fines in place for people who use their phones in the car and this is not the first graphic ad we’ve seen that targets texting and driving. But if the research is anything to go by and it’s true that so many young people are still using the phone behind the wheel, maybe it is time for us as parents to take a long hard look at the example we are setting for our children in the car. This means no checking messages at traffic lights, no looking over to the mobile to see who’s calling even if you have no intention of taking the call and all eyes on the road.

The call can wait, the text can go unanswered – you’ll never get that two seconds it takes to respond back.

How do you ensure you don’t even have the temptation of the mobile in the car?